The “Oak Rescue” gets irrigated

March 10th workday a near repeat of February 10th & 24th

Alex had 10 of us on the tenth of March and it felt like we were 20. The hardest working group of volunteers I have ever been with. To be fair, we worked hard because we didn’t want to spend the day potting cuttings for someone else to plant.

Well, maybe we just thought it would be more fun laying out drip lines for the “Oak Rescue” plot. This infamous plot has been on our radar since we discovered those sorry-looking trees in 2011 covered up and bogged down with the surviving Zinfandel grapevines left behind by the previous landowner.

We had to use a tractor to do the heavy work as we gently worked the vines out of the oak trees by hand.

So today, we followed the “flags” already laid out between the rows of Oak saplings, laying out a huge roll of plastic irrigation pipe, inserting “emitters” and “stapling” down the plastic pipe.

We followed up by pushing cottonwood cuttings into the ground next to the emitters and then transplanting Santa Barbara sedges, which we harvested from another part of The Preserve, alongside those cuttings.

Voila, we now have the makings of an understory ready to go.

One month ago, we were joined by a raft of Snowgeese and this month we were witness to a flock of Snowgeese heading out to wherever go when they leave The Preserve.